Victoria Betz MMC

Response to Brave New World; A New Way to Raise Children

I have come to notice that a lot of the books that we have been reading for class have been about a futuristic society in which the government controls every aspect of its citizens. In Brave New World, society has changed a great deal into a place that completely revolves around science and technology. What I found the most surprising about this book was how they completely changed the way that people grew up and the society that they would continue to live in for the rest of their lives. The book opens up with a group of boys being taken on a tour of the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre in the World State. It is here where humans are made. Although sex has become a very common thing, people having babies together have become an extreme taboo in the World State. This building is responsible for creating new citizens and ensuring that they are perfectly conditioned for whatever jobs they are given. Before the baby is even born, their whole lives have essentially been chosen for them. The World State goes by a caste system; Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. The babies are assigned to a certain caste when they are still an embryo. The embryos from the last three castes go through a system called the Bokanovsky process which splits the embryo into 96 different identical people. The lower three classes are also exposed to alcohol as a fetus along with oxygen deprivation in order to lower their intelligence. Jobs are also assigned according to what caste the fetus is placed in. Depending on the job, the fetus is conditioned to be able to survive certain conditions and outside factors. When they become children and babies, there are conditioned further. The center uses hypnopaedia to establish certain morals into the babies. They are given ideas of how they should

act according to their assigned caste and what they should not do. They are also conditioned to not like certain things. Lower castes are conditioned to hate books and flowers as infants. The World State is very concerned with making sure they can establish a society that views the consumption of goods as very important. By hating nature, which is free, they want to spend more money to go do other things. The World State wants to make sure that the lower castes dont read because that would make them educated, which is something that they lower castes arent supposed to be. The school-aged children ran around naked and engaged in sexual activity even though they were at such a young age. The boys that were on the tour were extremely surprised to learn that it used to be a taboo to let younger children engage in sexual encounters. This gives the children the idea that sex is normal, natural, and something that you should do with everyone. This idea is seen throughout the book, the reader comes across orgies and casual sex constantly throughout the book. Although having sex isnt considered a big deal, having children is. It is very uncommon for someone to actually carry a child. It is even rarer because 70% of females are sterilized almost immediately. It is a taboo to talk about people having parents long ago or even saying the words mother and father. This is seen in the book with John and his mother Linda who lived on a reservation. John is actually the Directors son, which is kept a secret until another character, Bernard, introduces him to the Director and others. This incident proves to be so embarrassing that the Director resigns as a result. This society has basically turned every taboo and everything that we have perceived as normal around. Children are made from the very start. In every other book I have read that deals with manipulation of a society have started at childhood, but not until they can actually

comprehend what is happening and what they should do. In this case, they start as early as possible. Even when they are still embryos they are given a place in the caste system. Depending on this, they are duplicated many times which erases any sense of individuality. Each child is then taught the same things and has the same morals which further erase individuality. By starting very young, the government is able to shape and mold what kind of citizens they want before they even come into the world. I honestly believe that this is a possibility for our world. By no one having children on their own, there is no longer a problem of overpopulation or family planning. This also gives the government ultimate power over everyone because they get to choose how everyone will eventually act and every person will essentially be exactly the same.